TGS 2005: Warhawk Trailer Impressions

We glimpse what looks suspiciously like gameplay footage from Incognito's long-overdue shooter sequel.

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Where has Warhawk been all our lives? Or at least in the decade since the seminal 3D shooter debuted alongside Sony's then-nascent PlayStation. Finally, the company threw us a bone back at E3 when it unveiled a bunch of trailers for potential upcoming PlayStation 3 games, among them a new Warhawk. Finally! How we've missed those cluster missiles. Except that footage at E3 didn't exactly show off much of the game itself, since it focused first on a soldier on foot and then on cinematic scenes of a sky full of fighters and warships that may or may not have even been real-time footage from an actual game.

Thankfully, today at TGS Sony took the wraps off a new Warhawk trailer that was either composed of gameplay from a work-in-progress version of the long-awaited sequel or at least represented a sufficient mock-up of what the gameplay will be like. We're going out on a limb and asserting that it was the former. The trailer was set from a third-person, behind-the-ship perspective, and it showed an agile fighter--one that looked like a thinner, streamlined version of the burly ship from the original game--zooming around the skies over a lush island environment, firing missiles and guns at enemy targets. There really wasn't much more to the trailer than that--and we sure missed seeing those old cluster missiles--but it piqued our interest all the same.

The Warhawk trailer looked superb, certainly, as all the PS3 footage (real-time or otherwise) has so far. But it didn't look so good that we doubted its authenticity the way, say, the Killzone E3 trailer has been called into question. This definitely looked believable as actual gameplay. In fact, we thought we saw telltale signs, such as aliasing, in the footage that gave it away as real time. Regardless of the veracity of this particular clip, the mere presence of a new Warhawk trailer at TGS means Sony and developer Incognito weren't just getting our hopes up for nothing by mentioning that hallowed shooter of yesteryear. And that makes us happy and eager, indeed, for more information. We'll let you know more information about Warhawk, as well as the PS3's other games, as we get it.